March 16, 2004

SMS, the Star Media of the Spanish Elections

Eva Dominguez for E Media Tidbits describes in a fascinating post, the role played by text messaging in the Spanish elections.

"If there is a medium that has contributed most to make news run like hell during the last days of this strange and difficult Spanish campaign, it is text messaging (SMS) through mobile phones. It has been used to spread news among citizens as well as political parties.

But the most impressive use happened the night before the elections. The spread of text messaging congregated some thousands of people in front of the political party running the country, Partido Popular, in just a couple of hours. (Here's an article about it, in Spanish.)

Any protest with political meaning is forbidden in Spain on that day. Any organization behind such public demonstrations could be punished. But, what if it is just the result of a spontaneous crush of SMS messages? The use of big media, which have been greatly tendentious in some cases, has not been as powerful as text messaging to spread the news and ask for the truth in the most intensive days of democracy in Spain".